Diane Sherman, teacher librarian/technology coordinator, arranges books for shelving at the media center at Red Hawk Elementary School, 1500 Telleen Ave., in Erie on Wednesday. Red Hawk, the St. Vrain Valley School District's newest elementary school in Erie, will organize its library on the "bookstore model" to encourage more students to use the library and its resources.
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Richard M. Hackett/Times-Call
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ERIE -- The newest elementary school in the St. Vrain Valley School District is scrapping the time-honored Dewey Decimal System and opting for a more user-friendly model for organizing books.

Red Hawk Elementary School, which will open this fall in Erie's Canyon Creek subdivision, has organized the 7,000 books in its library based on the model many large chain bookstores use.

That means the books won't have a call number on the spine. Instead, they are sorted by broad topics and then into more specific categories. The new system empowers students to track down materials on their own, said district librarian Holli Buchter.

"The library can be a completely enriching experience if students are able to look things up themselves and they don't feel like they have to wait in line to ask a librarian for help," she said.

Red Hawk is the first in the district to adopt the word-based classification system, and it may be the first elementary school library in the state to get rid of the Dewey Decimal System, which organizes materials by their assigned call numbers.

Books are divided into fiction and nonfiction, and both are shelved in categories based on subject matter. Larger categories like science and history are divided into subcategories.

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A student researching ancient Rome, for example, doesn't need to track down books scattered in several parts of the library, Buchter said. Instead, they head for the colorful "History" sign. There, books are sorted further into ancient, explorer, medieval, military and U.S. history. Within the ancient history subcategory, books are narrowed down to those about ancient Egypt or Rome.

Both fiction and picture books are sorted into their own broad categories and then shelved by the author's last name within each section. The idea is that a student who loves Harry Potter may notice other fantasy books in the same section and check those out, Buchter said.

As the library collection grows, additional categories and subcategories can be easily added, Buchter said.

Current categories coincide with topics teachers plan to cover in the classroom, said principal Cyrus Weinberger. Diane Sherman, teacher librarian and technology coordinator, will co-teach along with teachers. Red Hawk will offer both the traditional St. Vrain curriculum and Core Knowledge, a sequential curriculum for language arts, history, geography, math, science and arts that several charter schools use.

"The library is the link to bring those two curriculums together," Weinberger said.

District staff also solicited input from school librarians when creating the classification grid. One of discussions resulted in a "realistic fiction" section that groups together books about family, friends and social issues. Now, classic children's literature like Katherine Patterson's 1977 "Bridge to Terabithia" is neighbors with "Hoot," Carl Hiasson's 2002 work.

"They also requested a princess category, but we didn't go to that," Buchter said with a smile.

She also said staff will monitor checkout histories and catalog searches on library computers to see if the new system changes reading and search habits. If successful, Buchter said, the district may look at implementing the system districtwide.

The Rangeview Library District in Adams County, which St. Vrain used as model for its own classification system, has had positive public feedback about its bookstore model, called WordThink, said communication manager Stacie Ledden. The library district was the first in the country to get rid of Dewey Decimal and by February 2010, all seven of its libraries were organized based on WordThink.

"It's more intuitive," Ledden said. "It's using a language that people are familiar with."

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